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After analysing the foundations of classical utilitarianism, this sixth lesson invites you to reflect on the legacy of Bentham, from the nineteenth Century to the present. This lesson is an opportunity to discover how John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) reoriented Bentham’s utilitarianism, but also to jointly address some practical applications of utilitarianism in our contemporary world. In addition to watching the video clips, we suggest you read the fourth chapter of the book "Utilitarianism" by John Stuart Mill. We also invite you to consult the bibliography for this lesson and to complete the multiple choice assessment test. Discussion forums are available for any question or comment. Feel free to participate.

教学方

François Dermange

Ghislain Waterlot

脚本

Last time, we talked about John Stuart Mill's attempt to reconcile the concepts of happiness and virtue within one doctrine. In <i>Utilitarianism</i>, he compares virtue to money, something seemingly opposed to it. Let's quote him directly: "Virtue, according to the utilitarian doctrine, is not naturally and originally part of the end, but it is capable of becoming so; and in those who love it disinterestedly it has become so, and is desired and cherished, not as a means to happiness, but as a part of their happiness. To illustrate this farther, we may remember that virtue is not the only thing, originally a means, and which if it were not a means to anything else, would be and remain indifferent, but which by association with what it is a means to, comes to be desired for itself, and that too with the utmost intensity. What, for example, shall we say of the love of money? There is nothing originally more desirable about money than about any heap of glittering pebbles. Its worth is solely that of the things which it will buy; the desires for other things than itself, which it is a means of gratifying. Yet the love of money is not only one of the strongest moving forces of human life, but money is, in many cases, desired in and for itself; the desire to possess it is often stronger than the desire to use it, and goes on increasing when all the desires which point to ends beyond it, to be compassed by it, are falling off. It may, then, be said truly, that money is desired not for the sake of an end, but as part of the end. From being a means to happiness, it has come to be itself a principal ingredient of the individual's conception of happiness." This passage shows how a means to an end can become an end in itself, or part of one. Yet there is something peculiar, perhaps, in using the example of money to show how virtue can become a part of happiness. Mill's argument is that money can be considered an end in itself, something desired for its own sake. This is something we can all agree on. There is no doubt that, for many people, having money is a part of happiness. Yet originally, money is nothing more than a means -- a universal means of exchanging goods, objects, etc. Originally, money makes sense, or has meaning, only insofar as it enables us to make exchanges and obtain the things we need or want. For Mill, the fact that money has become an end desired in and of itself is in no way self-evident or intrinsic to money itself. Now, by analogy, he argues that the same pattern applies to virtue: though there is nothing intrinsic to virtue that necessarily ties it to happiness, nonetheless it has become an integral part of happiness for many people. So, unlike Bentham, John Stuart Mill fully recognizes that virtue -- in the sense of benevolence, kindliness, concern for others -- should be included in the definition of happiness, and thus rejects the Benthamite reduction of happiness to the mere search for pleasure and avoidance of pain. Let's listen to the next step in his argument. As regards money, "[t]he person is made, or thinks he would be made, happy by its mere possession; and is made unhappy by failure to obtain it. The desire of it is not a different thing from the desire of happiness, any more than the love of music, or the desire of health. They are included in happiness. They are some of the elements of which the desire of happiness is made up. Happiness is not an abstract idea, but a concrete whole; and these are some of its parts. And the utilitarian standard sanctions and approves their being so. Life would be a poor thing, very ill provided with sources of happiness, if there were not this provision of nature, by which things originally indifferent, but conducive to, or otherwise associated with, the satisfaction of our primitive desires, become in themselves sources of pleasure more valuable than the primitive pleasures, both in permanency, in the space of human existence that they are capable of covering, and even in intensity. Virtue, according to the utilitarian conception, is a good of this description. There was no original desire of it, or motive to it, save its conduciveness to pleasure, and especially to protection from pain. But through the association thus formed, it may be felt a good in itself, and desired as such with as great intensity as any other good; and with this difference between it and the love of money, of power, or of fame, that all of these may, and often do, render the individual noxious to the other members of the society to which he belongs, whereas there is nothing which makes him so much a blessing to them as the cultivation of the disinterested love of virtue." There is one particularly important sentence in this passage: the one in which Mill explains the transition that our "primitive pleasures" undergo in becoming something more valuable. There is thus a gradation of human pleasures. Some have more value than others. But this requires change, evolution: things that are not originally pleasures, or things not originally considered as having value, become pleasures or become valuable to us, provided we are willing to work on ourselves, to develop and grow. Mill, then, is giving the notion of happiness a new and different meaning. Not only, as Nietzsche argued, is one person's happiness not the same as another's, but a hierarchy of pleasures can now be established. The hierarchy Mill suggests, however, may not be the one you'd expect. Indeed, for Mill, the pleasure of being virtuous is superior to the the pleasure of being wealthy. Not only because individual wealth can be seen as a source of social injustice, whereas virtue is assumed to be strictly beneficial to society, but also from an individual, personal standpoint. You may know the famous aphorism in which Mill expresses this idea: "It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, is of a different opinion, it is only because they only know their own side of the question." What can we make of this? If the goal of human life is happiness, and Mill asserts that it's better to be an unhappy human than a happy pig, is he not contradicting himself? No. Happiness remains the goal. The argument hinges on what is meant by "unhappy," or "dissatisfied." If being unhappy consists in being unfulfilled in one's desire for more money, more enjoyment, more material things, then such a situation may indeed be preferable to a man who is uneducated, crass and unrefined, someone incapable of appreciating the subtleness and beauty of the world around him. For Mill, a wealthy man who is boorish and coarse is less to be envied than one who is cultured and refined, but poor. To prove this, Mill says we need only ask the concerned parties. If you ask the satisfied pig, he'll tell you he's perfectly happy. Mill's answer is that he only knows one side of things. On the other hand, the man of refinement, despite his poverty, knows both sides. He knows both sides of the question because, like anyone, he started out as a pig seeking satisfaction. As Mill sees it, we all start in this condition. We are born ignorant, uneducated, unsophisticated. We spontaneously desire pleasures that are material, coarse, basic. Only education has the power to open our minds to new perspectives and new possibilities. Education has the ability to introduce us to other ways of seeing the world, and thus change the very quality of our being, our tastes and preferences, our outlook on life. Mill believes a person who has been exposed to the finer things in life, who has become worldly and sophisticated through education, can no longer place coarse, rudimentary desires above more refined pursuits and enjoyments. Such a person will always prefer the pleasures of culture and taste, even to the detriment of satisfying his more primitive desires. The sad part, of course, is that it's impossible to get this point across to the "satisfied pig" who, as such, knows nothing of such higher forms of pleasure.